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Feds indict man for mistakes on discontinued forms

As most readers of this blog know, the venerable Shipper’s Export Declaration was discontinued in 2008. Instead, exporters now file the Electronic Export Information using the Automated Export System.

Apparently the news of this change has yet to make its way into the Justice Department, which recently indicted a California man, Pavel Flider, and his company, Trident International, for “false and misleading export information … in an SED” with respect to fifteen exports made between 2011 and 2013, long after said “SED” had been definitively retired.

Oh, and because those statements on the non-existent form were false, the DOJ charged him with violating the anti-smuggling statute, 18 U.S.C. § 554, which covers any export made “contrary to any law or regulation of the United States.” I’ve criticized this ridiculously overbroad statute before, noting that it turns a trucker on his way to Canada who drives 10 hours and 1 second in a day into a smuggler and a felon. Here the rule violation that turned the defendant into a smuggler was the false statement “in an SED.”

The DOJ press release contains allegations not included in the indictment, namely that “many” (but not all) of the items at issue were “controlled dual-use programmable computer chips capable of operating in austere environments making them useful in both civilian and military applications.” If that truly is the case, you have to wonder why they are just charging the defendant with false SED statements rather than a simple export violation.

Of course, I can imagine that there will be plenty of fun in the courtroom when the prosecutors, who don’t even know which forms are filed with exports, accuse the defendants of making mistakes when they filed their export documentation.